If Santa was a woman, could she do the job?

‘Headaches’, ‘babies’ and ‘not strong enough to carry a sack.’ Reasons children give for why Santa can’t be a woman.

December 22, 2015

We’re still smiling this Wednesday, albeit a bit nervously. What started as a bit of elfish fun about gender inequality, surfaced a real issue about who and what are shaping our children’s gender perceptions.
London creative agency Anomaly worked on Elle Magazine Uk’s #MoreWomen campaign which highlighted how few women there are in senior positions.

For Christmas they wanted to create more conversation about perceptions of gender. In their 90 second video they asked children “If Santa was a woman, could she do the job?”

The response they received was disturbingly based on bad stereotypes.

The “women can’t drive” stereotype:“She would get lost in the sky.”

The “women can’t possibly do anything else if they have children” stereotype:“If she had a baby then she’d be like doing the presents, taking care of the baby, giving it milk…”

And our personal favourite, “the delicate flower” stereotype:
“She would get a headache.”

Save for one boy pointing out that “Girls aren’t any different than boys,” the video concludes by asking what would a lady Santa be good at, which the last child undoubtedly concluded would be “Cooking.”

Terrible right? But there it is. Now the big question is how can we start amending theses stereotypes before a future generation of CEOs, VCs and HR teams are tainted too?

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